World News Briefs For Sunday, 10 November 2019
Hello Australia!! - Another South American country is throw in political chaos - India's Modi wins a big victory - Who's arming the civil war in Libya? - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:
Bolivian President Evo Morales is warning of a coup d'etat against Democracy as police in opposition strongholds join with protesters upset with the results of last month's presidential election. "Sisters and brothers, our democracy is at risk due to the coup d'etat that violent groups have launched to undermine the constitutional order," he wrote on Twitter. Evo won a strong but disputed victory - the US and its conservative South American allies quickly demanded another runoff election, and protests have been building in the weeks since. Last week, right-wing protesters kidnapped and abused a small town mayor who is an ally of Morales, marching her through the streets, cutting her her, beating her and pouring red dye on her.
Three deaths are confirmed in the New South Wales bushfires, and authorities fear the death toll could rise. NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons says assessment teams are bracing themselves for "considerable losses". At least 150 homes have been destroyed.
About two million people have been evacuated from their homes in northeastern India and Bangladesh because of Cyclone Bulbul. Seaports and air fields are closed, and two meter storm surges are expected as the cyclone makes its way over a wide area - that includes the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and home to the endangered Bengal tigers.
India's Supreme Court has awarded Hindus control of a disputed religious site in the town of Ayodhya for the construction of a temple. Muslims will be given five acres of land at an alternative site in the town. A mosque had stood there for centuries until rioting Hindu nationalists destroyed it in 1992, and the site had been disputed ever since. The ruling is a major victory for the Hindu nationalists and the ruling BJP party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is seeking to reshape India away from the more inclusive days of Congress Party governance.
A draft report working its way through the United Nations says several member nations - Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Jordan - are violating the arms embargo on Libya. Sudan actually sent troops to back-up renegade warlord Khalifa Haftar, while the UAE sent advanced weapons. Turkey supports and allegedly sent drones and armored vehicles to the international-recognized government. Earlier this year, France was suspected to routing US-made Javelin missiles to Haftar's rebels - so as long as people are killing each other, the arms dealers are making money.
The French Catholic Church says it will financially compensate victims who were abused by priests and others over the years. France's Roman Catholic Church has been among the slowest to accept responsibility for its part in the worldwide clergy abuse scandal, but Bishops finally voted in favor of the move during their biannual conference in the southwestern town of Lourdes. Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort said that the payments will recognize victims' suffering and "the silence, negligence, indifference, lack of reaction or bad decisions or dysfunction within the church". The amount of individual payments hasn't been worked out, and the fund making the payments will be established by the church as well as those clergy directly responsible for the abuse.
A US judge decided not to let convicted murderer Benjamin Schreiber out of prison in Iowa, despite his novel plea: The 66-year old claimed he had served his life-plus-four years sentence, because he had "died" on the table in the prison infirmary in 2015 during a terrible bout of sepsis. The judge ruled that being resuscitated is part of the natural life cycle and Mr. Schreiber should go back to his cell.