PESHAWAR (AP) –The Daesh terrorist group in claimed a devastating attack on a Shia Muslim mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, that killed at least 63 worshippers and wounding 194 people. In a statement that was posted on the group’s Amaq News Agency, the lone bomber was identified as an Afghan. It posted his picture and said “Daesh militants are constantly targeting Shias living in Pakistan and Afghanistan despite the intense security measures adopted by the Taliban and the Pakistani police to secure Shia mosques and centers.” The carnage at the mosque buried deep inside the narrow streets of Peshawar’s old city was horrific. According to the spokesman at Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, Asim Khan, many of the wounded were in critical condition. Scores of victims were peppered with shrapnel, several had limbs amputated and others were injured by flying debris. Peshawar Police Chief Muhammed Ejaz Khan said the violence started when an armed attacker opened fire on police outside the mosque in Peshawar’s old city. One policeman was killed in the gunfight, and another police officer was wounded. The attacker then ran inside the mosque and detonated his vest. The bomber had strapped a powerful explosive device to his body, packed with 5 kilograms (12 pounds) of explosives, said Moazzam Jah Ansari, the top police official for Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province where Peshawar is the capital.

 

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LONDON (The Guardian) – Several prominent U.S. cases where Black people got harsher sentences for unintentional voting errors than whites who committed fraud have showed that there is a racial double standard in the country’s criminal justice system, a report says. Bruce Bartman, white, was only sentenced to five years of probation after he went to Pennsylvania’s voter registration website and signed up his mother and mother-in-law, both dead, to vote in the late summer of 2020, the report said. A black woman named Pamela Moses in Memphis, however, was sentenced to six years in prison in late January for trying to register to vote while she was unaware of her ineligibility. The case, among many similar ones, underscored what experts see as a double standard in the U.S. criminal justice system, the report said, adding while white people face relatively light punishment for intentional cases of fraud, black people face tougher punishment for unintentional voting errors.

 

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BANGKOK (AFP) – Myanmar’s junta has revoked the citizenship of several members of an opposition government dominated by Aung San Suu Kyi’s toppled administration, it said Saturday. Ousted lawmakers formed the “National Unity Government” weeks after the military’s power-grab last year, and have vowed to overturn the coup. The NUG has since been declared a “terrorist” organization by the junta. Those stripped of citizenship include spokesman Sasa -- who goes by one name -- minister for foreign affairs Zin Mar Aung, home minister Lwin Ko Latt and human rights minister Aung Myo Min. The group had “violated the existing laws of the State and... found to be committing acts that could harm the interests of Myanmar,” according to a junta notice in state newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar. Writer Ei Pencilo and prominent activists Min Ko Naing and Ei Thinzar Maung had also had their citizenship revoked, it said. The NUG holds no territory and has not been recognized by any foreign government with many of its members in hiding or exile. Suu Kyi -- nominated as its head -- has been detained since the coup and faces a barrage of charges that could jail her for more than 150 years. Myanmar has been in turmoil since the coup and a subsequent military crackdown on dissent that a local monitoring group says has killed more than 1,600 people.

 

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ADDIS ABABA (Xinhua) – Ethiopia has established a national committee to repatriate hundreds of thousands of nationals currently residing in Saudi Arabia, an Ethiopian official said on Saturday. Dina Mufti, Spokesman, Ethiopia Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said a national committee headed by Demeke Mekonen, Ethiopia Deputy Prime Minister and acting Foreign Minister, has been established to repatriate and rehabilitate citizens living in difficult conditions in the Saudi Arabia, reported state media outlet Ethiopia Broadcasting Corporation. “This committee’s main purpose is returning home our people from Saudi Arabia in a short period of time and then resettling them in their respective home areas,” Mufti said. The Ethiopian government estimates there are currently about 750,000 Ethiopians living in Saudi Arabia of whom 450,000 are suspected to reside in the country without proper legal documents. It is estimated that tens of thousands of Ethiopians are trafficked to Saudi Arabia as well as various other countries annually, where they are mainly engaged in the informal economy. 

 

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LONDON (The Independent) – Police officers in half of the forces around Britain are currently having their conduct probed due to allegations they wielded their power for sexual purposes, troubling new figures showed. The fresh data comes a year after Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, went missing while walking home in Clapham, Southwest London, on March 3, 2021. It later emerged Everard had been kidnapped, raped and murdered by Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens, who was sentenced to a whole-life prison term in September. Freedom of Information requests to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, conducted by Sky News, discovered 31 out of 260 investigations the policing watchdog are carrying out revolve around complaints of officers accused of exploiting their authority for sexual gain. The figures revealed five police forces are involved in more than one case, while the Met Police, the UK’s largest police force, employs officers being probed by six of the investigations. Andrea Simon, director of End Violence Against Women coalition, told The Independent the data “reinforces the mountain of evidence showing that policing has a serious problem with institutional sexism, racism and misogyny”. Simon noted the inspectorate body for the police has demanded the response to violence against women and girls is dramatically improved. She added, “And we know that police abuse of power for sexual purposes is a major form of corruption dealt with by the police complaints body.”