New Delhi (AFP) – Raped by her husband on her wedding night aged 17, Divya described her repeated suffering an all-too-common account in India, permitted by a terrifying colonial-era legal loophole.
Tel Aviv (AFP) – Thousands gather in Tel Aviv to participate in the biggest peace event since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas. Performers and activists speak on stage in front of thousands of Israelis, Jews, Muslims and Christians to call for a shared future. The war started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,877 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tells visiting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban that his war-battered country needs a “just peace” after more than two years of fighting Russia’s invasion.
Banbury (United Kingdom) (AFP) – British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urges supporters to back his governing right-wing Conservative party two days before the country heads to a general election with the Tories trailing the opposition Labour in opinion polls, while British Labour party leader Keir Starmer says “our party and other parties and governments across the world, are the answer to the challenges that the world faces.”
Nurafshon (Uzbekistan) (AFP) – In the shade of an almond tree, Zubayda Pardayeva begins the age-old process of turning cocoons into silk that Uzbekistan wants to overhaul. The silk industry — an ancestral tradition in the Central Asian country which is the world’s third biggest producer — is state-controlled and unprofitable, but President Shavkat Mirziyoyev wants to make the silk sector one of the country’s major employers by 2027.
Roslin (United Kingdom) (AFP) – Labour is poised to stage a comeback north of the border as pollsters predict Scottish voters are set to shift allegiance after years of dominance by pro-independence SNP. The SNP, suffering from a bruised independence campaign and multiple scandals, is expected to lose ground to Labour – allowing the party to reclaim the seats that used to be Labour strongholds.
Washington (AFP) – “Our justice system has failed us,” says a protester outside the US Supreme Court after the top court ruled that Donald Trump enjoys some immunity from prosecution as a former president, a ruling that will likely delay his trial for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
Karachi (AFP) – On a densely populated island off Pakistan’s megacity of Karachi, a group of pregnant women wait in a punishing heatwave for the only midwife to arrive from the mainland. Each week Neha Mankani comes by boat ambulance to Baba, an old fishing settlement and reportedly one of the world’s most crowded islands with some 6,500 people crammed into 0.15 square kilometres.
(AFP) – A humanitarian convoy was attacked in the war-ravaged eastern DR Congo, sources told AFP on July 1. UK organisation Tearfund said two of their members of staff were still missing following the attack that took place in North Kivu province.
Dianjiang (AFP) – Loulee Wilson, an American college student, was born in China but given away by parents fearful of violating the country’s “one-child” policy. Now 19, she is among a growing number of Chinese adoptees returning to their birth country to trace their biological parents and understand where they came from.
Jerusalem (AFP) – Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jewish men protest in Jerusalem in rejection of a top court ruling that calls for them to be drafted into the Israeli military.
Paderborn (AFP) – France captain Kylian Mbappe admits that playing with a mask to protect his broken nose is “absolutely horrible” as he prepares for the game against Belgium at Euro 2024.
