News in Brief

Date: 06 December 2022 - 21:29

News ID: ۱۰۹۸۴۱

THESSALONIKI (AFP) -- Violent scuffles broke out in Greece’s second largest city after a Roma teenager was shot by police and left in a critical condition.The 16-year-old was shot in the head in the early hours of Monday morning after driving a truck away from a petrol station near the port city of Thessaloniki without paying, state TV ERT said.The Greek police department said the youth had tried to ram officers in pursuit on motorbikes in his attempt to evade arrest.Protesters burned roadblocks and threw Molotov cocktails at riot police on Monday evening, as well as smashing shop windows in the centre of the city.Police responded with tear gas and stun grenades. Another Roma youth was killed in 2021 near the port of Piraeus, also in a police pursuit.The incident also comes a day ahead of youth protests in several cities to mark the 2008 death of a Greek teenager, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, who was also fatally shot by a police officer. His death sparked weeks of sometimes violent protests in Greece.

***

LONDON (AFP) – Spain’s former king Juan Carlos I had immunity from harassment claims made against him by his former mistress while he was monarch, three Court of Appeal judges in London ruled on Tuesday.The judges overturned a lower court ruling that the 84-year-old former monarch could face a civil claim from Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, 57, assessing that he was “immune from the jurisdiction” of UK courts before his abdication in 2014.But Juan Carlos still faces a court battle over claims made about his conduct after he stepped down from the throne.Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, who lives in England, wants an “injunction and damages” due to “a continuous and ongoing campaign of harassment” against her.She claims the campaign began in 2012, following the “break-up of an intimate romantic relationship”, and continues to this day.

***

BRUSSELS (AFP) -- The European Union reached an agreement Tuesday to ban the import of products including coffee, cocoa and soy in cases where they are deemed to contribute to deforestation.The draft law, which aims to ensure “deforestation-free supply chains” for the 27-nation EU, was hailed by environmental groups as “groundbreaking”.It requires companies importing into the EU to guarantee products are not produced on land that suffered deforestation after December 31, 2020, and that they comply with all laws of the source country.The scope encompasses palm oil, cattle, soy, coffee, cocoa, timber and rubber as well as derived products such as beef, furniture and chocolate.Illegal production has spurred massive deforestation in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mexico and Guatemala.The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that an aggregate area of land bigger than the European Union, or some 420 million hectares (more than one billion acres), has been deforested around the world over the past three decades.The European Union is the second-biggest market for consumption of the targeted products after China.

***

MOGADISHU (Reuters) -- Somali forces and allied militias have pushed al Shabaab fighters out of a strategic town in central Somalia that the takfiri group has controlled for six years, officials and the African Union (AU) said on Tuesday.The government, backed by AU troops and clan militias, said it has killed around 700 members of al Shabaab and recaptured scores of settlements as part of a months-long campaign to loosen the al Qaeda-linked group’s control over large swathes of the country.Mahamud Hasan Mahamud, the mayor of Adan Yabal in Middle Shabelle region, said the army and militias had taken control of the town and the surrounding district of the same name without encountering resistance on Monday.He said the troops were sweeping the town, which is around 240km (150 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu, for mines.President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said al Shabaab’s fighters had taken residents of the town as human shields and destroyed infrastructure.

***

BOGOTÁ (AFP) – Heavy rains in northwest Colombia sent a wall of earth crashing onto a winding road, swallowing up a bus and other vehicles and killing 34 people, emergency services said. The landslide prompted a large rescue effort, with dozens of people in hard hats using backhoes and excavators to dig through the earth looking for victims. The bus had set out from the city of Cali with 25 passengers, and traveled 270 kilometers (170 miles) before being hit by the landslide as it passed through the Andes mountain region, civil defense officials said. Colombian media reported that a child had survived and was pulled from the arms of its mother, who did not make it. One survivor said the bus driver had at first managed to dodge the worst of the landslide. The rainy season that began in August is Colombia’s worst in 40 years, according to the government, causing accidents that have left more than 270 people dead.

***

KINSHASA (Reuters) -- Democratic Republic of Congo’s government said 272 civilians were killed in a massacre in the eastern town of Kishishe last week, raising the death toll from a previous estimate of 50. The government blamed the killings on the M23 rebel group, which has denied responsibility. It also said the rebels were backed by members of the Rwandan army, a frequent accusation by the Congolese government which Rwanda has consistently denied. Congo’s army and the M23, a Tutsi-led militia, have been locked in fighting for months in the country’s east. The alleged massacre occurred on Nov. 29 in Kishishe, in North Kivu province. The death toll was announced by Congolese industry minister Julien Paluku, speaking at a press briefing with government spokesman Patrick Muyaya.