World News
Murder of a journalist in Honduras, the 5th in 2022
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Steph Deschamps / October 11, 2022
A journalist and his father were shot dead in Tegucigalpa on Monday, bringing to five the number of journalists killed since the beginning of the year in Honduras, announced the Honduran Committee for Free Expression (C-Libre, independent).
Edwin Josué Andino, aged 23, was killed by a bullet fired at point-blank range in the face, Amada Ponce, director of the press freedom NGO, told AFP.
Before shooting him, his killers had gagged him with tape, a modus operandi in the killing of journalists in Mexico symbolizing the desire to “silence” the press, Ponce added.
The police said in a statement that “individuals dressed in uniforms similar to those of the (military police)” took the father and son out of their home in the Villafranca neighborhood, west of Tegucigalpa, and shot them with firearms.
Edwin Josué Andino had not been threatened before his murder, according to Raul Morazan, director of the LTV television station, for which the journalist had worked for two years.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras condemned the two murders on Twitter and urged the authorities to “establish concrete sanctions against those responsible.
The institution offered “technical support to the authorities in the search for and implementation of sustainable structural measures to protect those who defend human rights and practice journalism.
“This is the fifth journalist murdered since the beginning of the year in Honduras”, and the 98th in twenty years, including journalists, media directors and press employees, lamented Ms. Ponce.
Honduras is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, according to press freedom organizations. More than 90% of murders of journalists go unpunished.
With a rate of some 39 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, four times the world average, Honduras is also among the most dangerous countries in the world, outside of conflict zones.
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Sylvie Claire / September 23, 2023
At least 25 people, including two children, died when a bus crashed into a ravine in the Andean region of Huancavelica, in southern Peru, the authorities announced in a revised death toll on Monday evening.
An initial police report put the death toll at 20, with a further 35 injured. A statement from the Ministry of Health later that morning put the death toll at 24. Finally, at the end of the day on Monday, the death toll stood at “25 dead and 34 wounded”, according to the Ministry of Defense.
The accident occurred on Sunday night, when the bus carrying over 50 passengers from Huanta in Ayacucho to Huancayo in the Junin region ran off the road.
Images show the damaged bus lying on its side near a river below the ravine, debris and personal belongings strewn all around.
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte expressed her “condolences to the families” from New York, where she will be attending the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations. The Peruvian Episcopal Conference, for its part, urged the government to “carry out a serious investigation” to prevent such accidents from happening again.
On August 13, another accident in the same region left 13 people dead and 5 seriously injured.
Road accidents are frequent in Peru, mainly due to speeding and poor road maintenance, especially in mountainous areas.
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Sylvie Claire / September 17, 2023
In Japan, the number of people aged 100 has reached a record level: the world’s third-largest economy now has 92,139 people aged 100 or over. That’s 1,613 more than a year ago, reported the Ministry of Health in Tokyo on Friday.
For over half a century, the number of people aged 100 has been rising every year. Due to a low birth rate and almost non-existent immigration, no other industrial state is aging as fast as this East Asian country.
Japan’s population is also shrinking at a record pace. Last year, the number of Japanese fell by 801,000, the biggest drop since comparable data have been recorded. There are now 122.4 million.
When the Japanese Ministry of Health began compiling statistics in 1963, there were 153 centenarians. Twenty-five years later, there were over 10,000. According to the latest figures, around 88% of centenarians are women. Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Life expectancy for women is around 87 years, and 81 for men.
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Steph Deschamps / September 17, 2023
The death toll from the earthquake in Morocco has risen to 2,946, the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior announced on Wednesday evening. A further 5,674 people were injured.
The previous death toll was 2,901. The death toll is expected to rise further. Hopes of finding survivors are now very slim. Rescue workers have not yet been able to reach all the villages affected in the Atlas Mountains.
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the country on Friday night. The epicenter was located some 80 kilometers southwest of Marrakech. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 300,000 people in and around Marrakech were affected by the disaster.
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