PARIS (Reuters) -- A French court on Tuesday found three police officers guilty of manslaughter over the death of a Black man in Paris in 2015 and sentenced each to a 15-month suspended jail term, a judge said. Amadou Koume died after he was pinned to the ground by officers in a bar, put in a chokehold and subsequently left on his front, his hands cuffed behind his back, for more than six minutes. Koume, whose name has become a protest slogan against police violence in some communities, died as the result of a slow “mechanical asphyxia” according to a medical expert, the court heard during the trial. The prosecutor had sought a one-year suspended sentence, deeming that necessary and proportionate force had been used to immobilize Koume but that the officers were negligent in leaving him on his front. Rights groups say accusations of brutal, racist treatment of residents of often immigrant background by French police remain largely unaddressed, in particular in deprived city suburbs. In 2020, as public anger swelled over race discrimination following the death of George Floyd after being detained by police in the United States, the French government promised “zero tolerance” for racism within law enforcement agencies.

 

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GENEVA (AFP) -- One person is estimated to be dying of hunger every four seconds, over 200 NGOs warned Tuesday, urging decisive international action to “end the spiraling global hunger crisis”. In an open letter addressing world leaders gathering in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, 238 organizations from 75 countries, including Oxfam, Save the Children and Plan International expressed outrage at skyrocketing hunger levels. “A staggering 345 million people are now experiencing acute hunger, a number that has more than doubled since 2019,” they said in a statement. “Despite promises from world leaders to never allow famine again in the 21st century, famine is once more imminent in Somalia. Around the world, 50 million people are on the brink of starvation in 45 countries,” they said. Pointing out that as many as 19,700 people are estimated to be dying of hunger every day, the NGOs said that this translates to one person dying of hunger every four seconds.

 

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SAO PAULO (Reuters) -- Brazil presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva slightly extended his lead over President Jair Bolsonaro less than two weeks before the South American country’s election, a poll by IPEC released on Monday showed. In a first-round vote scheduled for Oct. 2, Lula reached 47% of voters’ support against 31% for Bolsonaro, compared with 46% and 31%, respectively, in the same poll a week ago, the survey showed. In a potential second-round runoff, Lula’s lead grew to 19 percentage points from 17 previously, indicating he would get elected with 54% of the votes versus Bolsonaro’s 35%. Bolsonaro’s approval rate was flat at 30%, while his disapproval rate increased to 47%, from 45% last week. Pollster IPEC, formerly known as IBOPE, interviewed 3,008 people in person from Sept. 17-18. The poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

 

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LIMA (Reuters) -- Ecuador has reached an agreement to restructure its debt with Chinese banks, the government said in a statement, providing relief worth some $1.4 billion until 2025. Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso announced in February that he was looking to restructure the country’s debt and improve the conditions of long-term oil sales contracts with Beijing. China has become Ecuador’s main financial partner in the past decade. Agreements were reached with both the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China (Eximbank) for loans worth $1.4 billion and $1.8 billion respectively, extending the loans’ maturity and reducing amortization.

 

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NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga (AFP) -- A volcano north of Tonga’s main island has erupted eight times in the past 48 hours, according to the Pacific nation’s geological service, which has warned mariners to keep their distance Tuesday. The Home Reef volcano has been erupting for the past 10 days, oozing molten lava and shooting steam and ash at least three kilometers (almost two miles) into the air. Home Reef’s eruption currently poses a low risk to “residents of Vava’u and Ha’apai” -- two of Tonga’s most populated islands -- the geological service’s Volcano Watch Team said in a statement. But warning levels were raised by one notch Tuesday as the pace of eruptions quickened. Seismic activity is fairly common around Tonga, a small archipelago nation with about 100,000 people spread across 171 islands. 

 

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TOKYO (AFP) -- Two people were confirmed dead and another two were found “without vital signs” after Typhoon Nanmadol slammed into Japan over the weekend, a government spokesman said Tuesday. The storm system made landfall by the southwestern city of Kagoshima on Sunday night, and dumped heavy rain across the Kyushu region before moving along the west coast. By Tuesday morning, it was downgraded to an extratropical cyclone as it crossed to the northeastern coast and headed out to sea. The storm toppled trees, smashed windows and dumped a month’s worth of rain in a 24-hour period on parts of Miyazaki prefecture, where the two deaths were confirmed. By early Tuesday, about 140,000 homes were still without power nationwide, mostly in Kyushu. Japan is currently in its typhoon season and faces around 20 such storms a year.