News in Brief
DHAKA (AFP) -- Bangladesh's army was Wednesday ordered to take a bigger role in helping hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have fled ethnic violence in Myanmar, by distributing relief aid and building shelters.
Troops would be deployed immediately in Cox's Bazar near the border where more than 420,000 Rohingya have arrived since Aug. 25, said road transport minister Obaidul Quader, who is also deputy head of the ruling Awami League party.
Previously troops had been tasked with transporting foreign relief supplies from Chittagong airport to Cox's Bazar.
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BRASILIA (AFP) -- Brazil's scandal-plagued former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and a tough-talking rightwing congressman lead voter intentions ahead of next year's presidential elections, a poll said Tuesday.
Underlining the turmoil in Brazilian politics, the poll also confirmed plummeting support for the current center-right government, with 75.6% saying it is doing a bad job. Only 3.4% think the government is doing a good job, down from 10.3% in February.
More than 84% of those polled disapprove of President Michel Temer's performance, while just 10.1% approve, the poll from the MDA research institute said.
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LYON, France (AFP) -- French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and a senior Vatican official were Tuesday ordered to stand trial for allegedly covering up for a pedophile priest accused of abusing several boy scouts in Lyon in the 1980s.
The most senior French Catholic official to be tried for failing to report a predator priest will go on trial on April 4 next year along with six co-defendants, a court in Lyon said.
Barbarin, who is archbishop of Lyon, is accused of having shielded priest Bernard Preynat from claims of abuse involving scouts in his Lyon parish. The head of the Vatican's powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Spanish Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, is accused of complicity in the alleged cover-up.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) -- More than 40 million people were trapped as slaves last year in forced labor and forced marriages, almost three quarters of them women and girls, according to the first joint effort by key anti-slavery groups to count the number of victims worldwide.
The International Labor Organization (ILO), human rights group Walk Free Foundation and International Organization for Migration said 40.3 million people were victims of modern slavery in 2016 - but added this was a conservative estimate.
They estimated 24.9 million people were trapped working in factories, on construction sites, farms and fishing boats, and as domestic or sex workers, while 15.4 million people were in marriages to which they had not consented.
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PARIS (AFP) -- Once a sign of the might of the French Socialists, the party's grand headquarters in central Paris have been put up for sale following the electoral drubbing suffered by the leftwingers this year.
The party has been based on the Rue de Solferino in the chic Seventh Arrondissement of the capital since 1981 when ex-leader Francois Mitterrand was elected the first Socialist president under the current constitution.
Thirty-six years later, the party is fighting for survival after its debacle in the presidential election in May and a humiliating score in parliamentary elections in June, when President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party swept the board.
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JUBA (AFP) -- An outbreak of fighting between government and rebel forces in South Sudan's oil-producing north left at least 25 people dead, a state official said.
The clash between rebels loyal to exiled former deputy president Riek Machar and government forces occurred early Monday in Nhialdiu, a village close to the town of Bentiu which has changed hands repeatedly since civil war began nearly four years ago.
The official said most of the dead were civilians. Tens of thousands have been killed and millions uprooted since 2013 during a conflict characterized by rape, ethnic massacres and attacks on civilians.
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CANBERRA (AP) -- The first 50 refugees to be resettled in the United States under a contentious agreement with Australia will be notified within days that they will be leaving the Pacific island camps where they have languished for years, the Australian prime minister said Wednesday.
Former President Barack Obama's administration agreed to accept up to 1,250 of Australia's refugees - mostly from Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka - in a deal some saw as repayment for Australia agreeing to accept Honduran and Salvadoran refugees under a U.S.-led resettlement program from a camp in Costa Rica.
Troops would be deployed immediately in Cox's Bazar near the border where more than 420,000 Rohingya have arrived since Aug. 25, said road transport minister Obaidul Quader, who is also deputy head of the ruling Awami League party.
Previously troops had been tasked with transporting foreign relief supplies from Chittagong airport to Cox's Bazar.
***
BRASILIA (AFP) -- Brazil's scandal-plagued former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and a tough-talking rightwing congressman lead voter intentions ahead of next year's presidential elections, a poll said Tuesday.
Underlining the turmoil in Brazilian politics, the poll also confirmed plummeting support for the current center-right government, with 75.6% saying it is doing a bad job. Only 3.4% think the government is doing a good job, down from 10.3% in February.
More than 84% of those polled disapprove of President Michel Temer's performance, while just 10.1% approve, the poll from the MDA research institute said.
***
LYON, France (AFP) -- French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and a senior Vatican official were Tuesday ordered to stand trial for allegedly covering up for a pedophile priest accused of abusing several boy scouts in Lyon in the 1980s.
The most senior French Catholic official to be tried for failing to report a predator priest will go on trial on April 4 next year along with six co-defendants, a court in Lyon said.
Barbarin, who is archbishop of Lyon, is accused of having shielded priest Bernard Preynat from claims of abuse involving scouts in his Lyon parish. The head of the Vatican's powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Spanish Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, is accused of complicity in the alleged cover-up.
***
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- More than 40 million people were trapped as slaves last year in forced labor and forced marriages, almost three quarters of them women and girls, according to the first joint effort by key anti-slavery groups to count the number of victims worldwide.
The International Labor Organization (ILO), human rights group Walk Free Foundation and International Organization for Migration said 40.3 million people were victims of modern slavery in 2016 - but added this was a conservative estimate.
They estimated 24.9 million people were trapped working in factories, on construction sites, farms and fishing boats, and as domestic or sex workers, while 15.4 million people were in marriages to which they had not consented.
***
PARIS (AFP) -- Once a sign of the might of the French Socialists, the party's grand headquarters in central Paris have been put up for sale following the electoral drubbing suffered by the leftwingers this year.
The party has been based on the Rue de Solferino in the chic Seventh Arrondissement of the capital since 1981 when ex-leader Francois Mitterrand was elected the first Socialist president under the current constitution.
Thirty-six years later, the party is fighting for survival after its debacle in the presidential election in May and a humiliating score in parliamentary elections in June, when President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party swept the board.
***
JUBA (AFP) -- An outbreak of fighting between government and rebel forces in South Sudan's oil-producing north left at least 25 people dead, a state official said.
The clash between rebels loyal to exiled former deputy president Riek Machar and government forces occurred early Monday in Nhialdiu, a village close to the town of Bentiu which has changed hands repeatedly since civil war began nearly four years ago.
The official said most of the dead were civilians. Tens of thousands have been killed and millions uprooted since 2013 during a conflict characterized by rape, ethnic massacres and attacks on civilians.
***
CANBERRA (AP) -- The first 50 refugees to be resettled in the United States under a contentious agreement with Australia will be notified within days that they will be leaving the Pacific island camps where they have languished for years, the Australian prime minister said Wednesday.
Former President Barack Obama's administration agreed to accept up to 1,250 of Australia's refugees - mostly from Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka - in a deal some saw as repayment for Australia agreeing to accept Honduran and Salvadoran refugees under a U.S.-led resettlement program from a camp in Costa Rica.