World news in brief
Belarus authorities threaten use of firearms against protesters
Authorities in Belarus have threatened to start shooting demonstrators, massively escalating the stakes in the standoff between dictator Alexander Lukashenko and those opposing him. In a video message released on social media yesterday, the deputy interior minister, Gennady Kazakevich, claimed protests had become “extremely radical”. “Interior ministry officers and soldiers will not leave the streets,” he said. “If necessary, they will use special equipment and firearms.” By the evening, authorities were living up to their hardline promise, using stun grenades and teargas to break up a protest march.
The outlines of the more aggressive approach to protest control emerged over the weekend. On Sunday, troops and riot police clashed with thousands of anti-Lukashenko protesters. They arrested nearly 600, often with violent force. In a few cases, demonstrators were successful in fighting back to secure the release of their own. In all but a few instances since protests erupted in May, the demonstrators have remained
peaceful despite obvious provocations.
Teenager could become first millennial saint
A teenager who died from leukaemia has moved one step closer to becoming the first millennial saint. In a service on Saturday in the Italian town of Assisi, where he died in 2006, Carlo Acutis became the youngest contemporary person to be beatified. This means that the Catholic Church recognises his ability to intervene on behalf of those who pray in his name, and sets him another step further on the path to sainthood.
Born in London in 1991, Acutis moved to Milan with his family as a three-year-old, and taught himself to code from a textbook as a young boy, running websites for Catholic organisations and creating an online catalogue of purported miracles. Earlier this year, Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to Acutis himself, supposedly carried out some seven years after his death. The Church claims that Acutis intervened from heaven in 2013 to save the life of a seven-year-old boy in Brazil, whose rare pancreatic disorder was purportedly healed after coming into contact with a piece of one of Actutis’s old T-shirts.
Bangladesh approves use of death penalty in rape cases
Amid nationwide protests following a surge in sexual crimes, Bangladesh’s cabinet yesterday approved an increase in the maximum punishment in rape cases from life imprisonment to the death penalty. The country’s law minister, Anisul Huq, said that the cabinet, chaired by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, approved the proposal to make the death penalty the highest punishment. “The law needed to be amended quickly ... Cabinet has decided an ordinance will be promulgated tomorrow, with the approval of the president, as the parliament is not holding sessions currently,” he said.
The country has seen a surge of sexual crimes in recent years, with nearly 889 incidents reported between January and September, more than a fifth of them gang rapes, according to human rights group Ain o Salish Kendra. According to the group, at least 41 victims died. The recent protests broke out after a video went public of a group of men stripping and attacking a woman in Noakhali, a district in southeast Bangladesh.
Four out of 10 Spaniards want republic instead of monarchy
More than 40 per cent of Spaniards support establishing a republic following the abrupt departure abroad of former king Juan Carlos amid a cloud of scandals, according to a poll published yesterday. The 82-year-old former monarch has been living in the United Arab Emirates since he left Spain in August to avoid causing further embarrassment to his son, King Felipe VI.
Some 40.9 per cent of respondents said they preferred a republic, while 34.9 per cent said they supported the royal family, and 24.2 per cent said they did not know, according to the survey for the mainly left-wing group Platform for Independent Media. The poll, which questioned 3,000 people, also found that 48 per cent want a referendum on the monarchy, which under Spain’s constitution is the only way to decide the fate of the institution, while 25 per cent were opposed and 16.1 per cent did not know. The Nobel laureate Maria Vargas Llosa was among 183 high-profile supporters of the monarchy who posted a video on YouTube on Sunday in support of King Felipe.